Floyd Gibbons

Floyd Phillips Gibbons (born 1887, Washington, D.C.; died September 1939, Pennsylvania) was the war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune during World War I.

Gibbons started with the Tribune in 1907. He became well-known for covering the Pancho Villa Expedition in 1916, and for reporting on the 1917 torpedoing of the British ship Laconia, on which he was a passenger.

As a World War I correspondent at the Battle of Belleau Wood, France, Gibbons lost an eye after being hit by German gunfire while attempting to rescue an American soldier. In August 1918, Gibbons was given France's greatest honor, the Croix de Guerre with Palm, for his valor on the field of battle. On June 21, 1941, Marine Corps League State Commandant Roland L. Young posthumously awarded Gibbons a gold medal, making him an honorary member of the Marine Corps. It was the first such civilian honor ever made in the history of the Marine Corps League.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Gibbons was widely known as a radio commentator and narrator of newsreels, for which he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He also wrote the alternate-history novel "The Red Napoleon". In 1927 he wrote a biography of the Red Baron called "The Red Knight of Germany". He died of a heart attack in September 1939 at his farm in Pennsylvania.

In 1953 Gibbons' brother Edward published a biography of Floyd titled "Floyd Gibbons - Your Headline Hunter".

References

* "Floyd Gibbons - Your Headline Hunter"; Exposition Press, New York, 1953, a biography by his brother.

External links

* [http://www.worldwar1.com/sffgbw.htm Floyd Gibbons at Belleau Wood] Article condensed from Edward's book by Shelley Mitchell-Schaaf, Floyd's great niece.
* [http://www.otr.com/gibbons.shtml Floyd Gibbons biography - "Radio Days" website]
* [http://www.skaneateles.org/laconia1.html Gibbons's article on the sinking of the Laconia]